A gaming geek blog inspired by the grandiose science fiction imagery from games, comics, books, and popular culture.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

September gameday recap

So yesterday saw a light turnout for our HotT-Texas monthly Hordes of the Things get-together at Dragon's Lair-San Antonio. There were just four of us, so we ended up playing a 2-on-2 game: Johnny and Brian deployed 48 points of Johnny's Romans, while Chip and I took 48 points of Chip's damn elves. (Apologies for the poor quality of the photos; I forgot my camera and took a couple of pics with my phone.)

The Romans defended, setting up both commands in an unbroken line. The elves deployed in two groups in an attempt to get around the Romans' right flank and take out the stronghold. The first few bounds consisted of each side marching toward the other, with the Romans sending riders out to attack my command's right flank.

Once the Romans got in range, however, I attempted to ensorcell their commander-in-chief, a hero general. He withstood my first magical attack, but on my second attempt I was victorius, turning his horse into a llama. The rest of the Roman army didn't like that, and fled the field (i.e., they lost their commander-in-chief and lost more AP than the elves, who were unbloodied at that point), giving victory to the elves. Of course, I didn't catch that right away and we played a couple more bounds before realizing the elves had won.

Even though we played just one game and I was ready for more HotT action, other people (who evidently have lives) had other things to do, so that was the extent of our Hordes of the Things gameday. It wasn't quite the end of our gaming, however.

Brian showed us a recent purchase, a spaceship game called War Rocket with retro-looking minis by Hydra Miniatures. He refereed a quick game between Chip and myself Chips played the saucer ships (the agile Zenithians), while I took the aerodynamic but less-maneuvarable Imperials. In our playtest with equal forces, I managed to destroy three out of four enemy ships and took no casualties. However, I didn't win, as Chip was able to capture the objective and carry it off his side of the board, even after I blew up the first ship carrying the McGuffin. The game has fairly simple rules and plays very quickly, and the minis have a great mid-20th century design aesthetic. I look forward to playing it again.